Gold Mine Misery

I spent much of the weekend searching for another gold mine to invest in. Gold is still going bonkers, but many of the shares had risen so much I was dubious about the chances of fantastic growth. What I needed was a mine that has missed the last surge.

Amazingly I found it - AVM:Avocet Mining had risen from 2p to 4p in the February gold rush, but given they used to trade at 250p this seemed like a meagre increase.

A first quarter update had signaled an increase in production, so with gold prices even higher this seemed like the perfect time to pounce. The share price had gone up by 29% on Friday, but I was ready to leap into action as the market opened on Tuesday morning after the bank holiday.

I had to sell first. My BYG:Big Yellow Group shares had been dragging themselves like a snail back towards profitability, but I decided to take a £25 loss in order to leap upon the bonanza about to hit Avocet

In the time it took me to sell those shares, the asking price had risen from 6.5p to 10.25p - Aaaarghh!!

What to do? Last time this happened I baled out and turned away, only to see TLY:Totally climb by a further 40% and then about 100% over the following week. Well this time I wasn't going to be scared off, and bought 9,902 shares at 10.25p with £5.07 stamp duty costing £1,028.98.

Well that was a mistake - they stayed high all morning and it looked like I might sneak into profit on the day, but by the end they had dropped and I was down by £100. Today they dropped another 10% and I'm down by £194. Bugger!

I'm hoping the drops were caused by people taking short term profits. I know I have when penny shares have gone up by 100%. With the gold price as it is, these do appear to have potential to get up to 20p.

I'm a little annoyed with myself though - I'm trying to reduce my exposure to high risk shares, but what do I do - sell a good, solid dividend-paying share to buy a loss-making speculative purchase in the hope of rapid gain. Exactly the behaviour I'm trying to avoid.

Not only that - but what happened to buy low and sell high? What was I thinking, buying at about 40% above the price I was aiming for? The experience with TLY:Totally has screwed me up in many ways!

To compound my misery over this purchase, the rest of the portfolio lost £300 today and is down £400 at the halfway point of the week. The leap in KIBO:Kibo Mining early in the week was erased today. FXI:Fusionex has slumped to a loss, as has SPD:Sports Direct. RCI:Rapidcoud has lost half it's profit value and my big hope AMYT:Amryt Pharma just keeps dropping and is now down by £310.

One tiny ray of sunshine to cling onto is the rise of CWR:Ceres Power Holdings by 13% today, lifting the profit to a wonderful £770 and saving the SIPP falling into the red for the week, at least for now...